Set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, Dark Millennium was under development by Vigil Games with a release window of Q1 2014. Following THQ's bankruptcy filing and subsequent asset auction, the development and release of Dark Millennium is currently uncertain.

It's not that we enjoy talking about THQ's miseries, though you'd be forgiven for thinking so, given the general volume of rather lousy news we've reported on the publisher in the last several months. Today's news probably isn't going to help matters, but we swear, we hate reporting on this. It's just that this stuff keeps happening.

Imagine this, but less massively online.

Today's woeful news comes surrounding THQ's former Warhammer MMO, Dark Millennium. At one point not too long ago, industry fixture Kevin Dent proclaimed the game dead on twitter, which got THQ PR into a tizzy of denials, claiming the game was still in the works, though eventually conceding that the company was seeking a partner to help finance and publish the game.

Now Dent's proclamations of doom have been proven partially right, as the game has been shifted to a more traditional "premium" single- and multiplayer game. Dark Millennium, the MMO, is dead. Long live Dark Millennium, the single-player-focused adventure, apparently. The new version of Millennium will include online multiplayer, but it shall be decidedly less massive than previously intended.

As if that news weren't troubling enough, THQ decided to put a particularly unpleasant tasting cherry on top of this whole shit sundae by also announcing over a hundred layoffs, split between Vigil Games and Relic Entertainment. 79 were let go from Vigil, while 39 were laid off at Relic.

The layoffs were perhaps inevitable, given the shift in Dark Millennium's direction. Still, this is just the latest volley of layoffs surrounding THQ products in a year's span that has already seen several bouts of this. 240 employees were let go back in February, while last June THQ shuttered Kaos Studios, the team behind Homefront, altogether.

It's not that we enjoy talking about THQ's miseries, though you'd be forgiven for thinking so, given the general volume of rather lousy news we've reported on the publisher in the last several months. Today's news probably isn't going to help matters, but we swear, we hate reporting on this. It's just that this stuff keeps happening.

Imagine this, but less massively online.

Today's woeful news comes surrounding THQ's former Warhammer MMO, Dark Millennium. At one point not too long ago, industry fixture Kevin Dent proclaimed the game dead on twitter, which got THQ PR into a tizzy of denials, claiming the game was still in the works, though eventually conceding that the company was seeking a partner to help finance and publish the game.

Now Dent's proclamations of doom have been proven partially right, as the game has been shifted to a more traditional "premium" single- and multiplayer game. Dark Millennium, the MMO, is dead. Long live Dark Millennium, the single-player-focused adventure, apparently. The new version of Millennium will include online multiplayer, but it shall be decidedly less massive than previously intended.

As if that news weren't troubling enough, THQ decided to put a particularly unpleasant tasting cherry on top of this whole shit sundae by also announcing over a hundred layoffs, split between Vigil Games and Relic Entertainment. 79 were let go from Vigil, while 39 were laid off at Relic.

The layoffs were perhaps inevitable, given the shift in Dark Millennium's direction. Still, this is just the latest volley of layoffs surrounding THQ products in a year's span that has already seen several bouts of this. 240 employees were let go back in February, while last June THQ shuttered Kaos Studios, the team behind Homefront, altogether.

This is a damn shame. I respect relic all to hell and their games should sell better then they do. And I don't know what the problem is... lack luster marketing? I avoided company of heroes for years, it always seemed like a generic WW2 RTS. When I actually played it, I found it was the best RTS I've ever played next to Starcraft. It's one of my favorite PC games and it has an MIND BLOWING attention to detail. You can feel the love in that title.

When people say that if you make a quality title, the sales will come, I point to relic as one of the most underrated developers out there.

All the 40k games these companies have made have been awesome, I really don't see why they didn't sell better. Even if you don't know about the universe, shouldn't the look of it really appeal to people who love stuff like Halo and GTA? As much as I love 40k, the aesthetic is obviously very junior high boy doodles, like heavy metal album covers.

Well, that sucks, on both counts - especially sorry about the developers, but I guess that's pretty inevitable if the game gets scaled down from being an MMO, especially with how things seem to be going at THQ. Man... sure hope they manage to stay alive, somehow.

I hope that the people who gave the word on acquiring Udraw also lost their jobs as it might have been okay but they sunk way too much into it. As someone also recently laid off from work, best of luck to all the people let go from Relic & Vigil.

Dammit, shame to hear Relic got hit for stupid mistakes made higher up. Be interesting to see what Dark Millennium turns out to be. Don't exactly have high hopes for a single player game salvaged from the dead husk of an MMO. Can we just get Homeworld 3 now?

@Rincewind: Sadly given GWs history they'll probably let THQs right to the WH40k universe run it's course and if it goes bad, they'll sit on the video game rights to the IP for about 10 years before giving it another chance.